Putting aside the endless, circular discussions about long distance trains and comparative subsidies, a question comes to mind. What would you consider a good candidate(s) for short distance 110 - 125 mph (minimum) corridors?
Since you ask, Schlimm, how about New Orleans to Mobile with stops at Gulfport and Biloxi. The Mississippi Gulf Coast has attracted a lot of new people with casinos and there is now a lot more travel between along there. After Katrina Amtrak stopped service and it has never been reinstated. One problem with the shortened Sunset Limited it that many people who used to get on east of New Orleans would continue west of New Orleans so Amtrak has kicked a lot of customers off that train.
Of course we could think about a New Orleans to Jacksonville reinstatement and also a Mobile to Birmingham reinstatement to connect with the Crescent. But those go beyond your question.
When Jefferson and Varina Davis lived at Beauvoir, Sarah Dorsey’s home in Biloxi, the Davises were able to travel to New Orleans by train. That is not an argument; it is only a reminiscence.
You can’t just pair cities for form corridors to run trains. You’ve got to find reasons for people to travel from one terminal to another and take into considereation intermediate markets. Historic movements of people, present movements, and projected movements between all points have to be explored and understood. IT is easy to pick a top 50 or 100 market or market pairs and have a fair expectation. But there may be even top 200 city/market pairs which would acutally be more productive or prosperous. It is easy to choose Chicago and go to Milwaukee or Minniapolis for choosing a corridor, but there actually may be better prospects Milwaukee-Janesville or Janesville-Milwaukee-Green Bay based on the known movement of people. Industry and business at each terminal and inbetween terminals will help decide. Yeah, New Orleans-Mobil sound like an easy paring but how many in Mobil need go to New Orleans on a corridor markeitng plan when a several exisiting style trains will do…but New Orleans to say Huston might be perfect. This is an intereseing excercise and I’m anxious to see the city/market parings and the reasons why one thinks it will work.
The Ohio corridor (Cleveland - Columbus - Dayton - Cincinnati) made sense in terms of two criteria, distance (270 miles) and population centers, but fell victim to politics. Houston - San Antonio (200 miles) at first glance looks OK, but there is little in between. San Antonio - Austin - Waco - Dallas (280 miles) might work if the speed were there and Texans could be convinced to try the train.
SCHLIMN has the correct idea.
1. I really like the idea of a hub at Cincinnati with runs to Indianapolis - CHI; Louisville - St. louis / Nashville
2. LAX - Phoenix - Tucson but would not have a whole lot of intermediate traffic.
3. Atlanta in no particular order to ;
a. Chatanooga - Nashville / Knoxville
b. Birmingham
c. Montgomery - Mobile might be a little long
d. Macon - Savannah
e. Columbus Ga ( Ft Benning expansion has really gummed up I-185
f . Greenville / Spartanberg - Charlotte
4. Present Charlotte plans
a. Columbia - Charleston / augusta
b. Raleigh - Richmond - Wash
5. any of the Florida major metropolitan areas
6. PHL - Pittsburgh
7. St. Louis - Kansas city
All of the above are locations with a high population growth since the last of the great RR routes disappeared and probably could support these routes.
The Federal Railroad Administration site has a map showing the anticipated high speed rail corridors. The URL is: http://www.fra.dot.gov/Pages/203.shtml.
I would like to see the Dallas/Fort Worth to San Antonio corridor, known to Texans as the I-35 corridor, developed. It is the most populous corridor in Texas. Also, I would like to see the proposed privately funded and operated corridor between Dallas and Houston come to fruition.
Texans will use public transport if it meets their needs. After all they are the ones who helped launch Southwest Airlines, which today is America’s largest commercial airline. It is also public transport. As Texas becomes more congested, especially along the I-35 corridor, more Texans may look to passenger rail as a viable transport option. It will need to be frequent, quick, comfortable, safe and affordable.
Aside from Amtrak, Sam1, who would bid on it? From the private sector in this Country? It has been hammered into everybody’s head that passenger service loses money, that freight service is the only rail commodity that makies money, that passenger service has to be handed off to public agencies so that fthe private sector doens’t get burdened, etc. I guess the real quesiton is, “is there anybody, corporate or indivudually, who believes in rail passenger service a profit making business who will bid on this or any rail passenger proposition?” I doubt there are any believers in the US. If so, they would seek government subsidies anyway, so what have you achieved?
Private investors are sponsoring programs in Italy and Florida. In addition, Australia’s Great Southern Railways’trains have been operated by a private company for several decades. And private investors are attempting to put together a proposal to offer private passenger rail services between Dallas and Houston.
Whether the private operators will require governmental subsidies remains to be seen. The Great Southern Railway, which runs three of the country’s long distance trains, gets subsidies. But they are less than what it cost the government to run the trains.
Contracting is one of the major advantages of privatizing passenger rail. If the contractor fails to meet the required performance standards necessary to receive subsidies, the government can withhold them. Or if it awards the contract, it can rebid it. This is a powerful tool. It drives efficiencies.
A privatized passenger rail system built on the Amtrak model or any other government model is sure to fail. If it is to succeed, it must be different. As noted in another thread, it needs to rid itself of the passenger train mind set that has been extant, and focus on innovation designed to meet today’s needs. &n
The purpose of this thread was to examine what we, those of us in this forum. thought might be some good candidates for short corridor routes, not merely reiterating what some study has proposed or what some investors are proposing. And it was an attempt to put to one side, for purposes of a fruitful discussion, the issue of subsidies and who runs the trains. But I guess for some, continuing the circular arguments are more important than advancing towards the goal of designing a modern, 21st century passenger rail service.
I guess I misunderstand “privitizing”. I believe it to mean private enterprise, private monies, invested to produce a product or perform a service. Once it relies on subsidies, it is no longer a private enterprise. Providing a service to a government agency is also does not sit as private enterprise in this situtaiton as the government is providing the service by paying someone else to operate it. In my beliefs private enterprise owns or leases the track, owns or leases the equipment, and operates the service for better or for worse. If a government owns or leases the track, owns or leases the equipment, then hires a private contractor to operate it, it is a public enterprise and not private capital. Contracting is not privatizing passenger rail but either a slight of hand or play on words to deflect what is really happening.
Unfortunatealy, Schlimm, any line drawn on a map between any two or more cities or markets can qualify as a corridor; whether the points at each end or in between would support or even need the service is inconsequential. Too many of us are more pragmatic than that. If you were to draw a line 200-500 miles long out of New York city, there would be dozens of lines which could provide a corridor like appearance but not be worth the lead or ink used. As a railfan, I’d love to see lots of trains running on lots of corridors and lots of rail lines. But I know that it is really neither profitable nor sensable. As my mantra goes, it is not running trains but providing a service. And that service has to make sense to make dollars.
I’m with Henry. I see absolutely no difference between the government hiring an employee and the government hiring a company other than the fact that the business has to hire the employee and mark up the cost so that the business can make a profit, too.
Obviously henry, most of us are not talking merely about drawing lines between two markets. What we are talking about in connecting the larger endpoints 300 miles apart that could serve large populations at the ends and in between. As sustained (average) speeds increase, the length of the corridor can increase as well. It goes without saying your mantra, to anyone who has observed real passenger services in Europe or elsewhere, that a service must prov
For example, in Germany, here are four major corridors serving major end points with some intermediate stops on routes 1 and 2…
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Hamburg - Frankfurt 316 miles, 6 hours by auto, 4:05 on an ICE. (relatively slow, with 4-5 intermediate stops)
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Frankfurt - Berlin 360 miles, 6 hours by auto, 4:10 by ICE (six intermediate stops and possibly one cross-platform change) On this route, there are a dozen ICE’s between 7 am and 12 noon.
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Hamburg - Berlin 180 miles 3 hrs. by auto, 1:40 on ICE
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Frankfurt airport - Cologne 180 miles, 2+ hrs by auto, 56 minutes by ICE
I disagree with your perspective of privatization. It is a world of difference to have a private contractor run a service, with some monies directly or indirectly provided by government.
Discussing privatization in a thread on passenger rail corridors is appropriate. It is an option for developing rail corridors in the United States. As noted in my initial post to this thread, I believe a strong case can be made for developing corridors between DFW and San Antonio as well as DFW and Houston. I hope that the private investor initiatives are successful.
The scope of the subjects discussed in our forums has been wide and varied. I don’t have a problem with it. If people want to push the outside of the scope envelope, I am perfectly willing to have them do it. If I don’t like it, I won’t respond. Or I can quit!
sam1: While I agree that the subject of contracting for discussion routes out on bids would be a good subject, the point of this thread was to simply look at one element, namely which corridors have the most potential for early development.
One of the major trends in the US over the past 60 years has been the decline of many of the once prosperous population centers in the northeastern and midwestern US states, while overall population has doubled. For example, many (not all) of the cities along the Susquehanna River valley have seen populations drop by nearly 50% and the loss of most of their productive economic base. Many of the train routes in the 'golden age" were in areas like that. At the same time, many population areas in Texas, the west coast and the southeast have grown tremendously, but in many cases, have meager service at best. So developing routes out of the Atlanta hub, within Florida, and between various cities in Texas makes sense, at least from the perspective of serving the most people.
John WR: “When Jefferson and Varina Davis lived at Beauvoir, Sarah Dorsey’s home in Biloxi, the Davises were able to travel to New Orleans by train. That is not an argument; it is only a reminiscence.”
John, you remember when the president of the Confederacy and his wife lived in Beauvoir? I thought I was one of the oldest contributors to these forums, but you have me far oustripped.[:)]
Well, I was only there the last few years Jeff and Varina were next door. Occasionally we caught the train to New Orleans together.
Going back to the original question, the trouble with picking pairs of cities out of the blue for train service is that if these already do not have regular service, you need to change the attitudes of the people there, and mental inertia is difficult to overcome. There also needs to be good public transit at each end so your passengers won’t be stranded. I would love to see this happen around here, and there have been discussions for years about New Orleans–Baton Rouge or New Orleans–Mobile service, but I don’t think either one would have enough traffic to justify it.
I think the way to handle this is to plan primarily on extending existing corridors. The southern end of the NE corridor comes to mind. I would suggest connecting Atlanta with D.C. might be worthwhile. As the existing service in Virginia and North Carolina improves in speed and frequency of service, it can be extended into South Carolina and eventually Atlanta. Of course, there should be regular, frequent 79 MPH service at the extended portions of the route which would be upgraded as traffic increases. It doesn’t make sense to jump in with an expensive high-speed route, then wait for people to decide to use it.